My career aspiration is to continue receiving a tech industry paycheck until I finish grad school.

Mueller supposedly knows all of this, and I would like him to finish his investigation up right the fuck now.

Matt Whitaker's wife says everyone knows he's almost done? [link]

I'm really sorry about your situation, Consuela. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be.

Also it makes me angry when I see right-wing news stories about how the shutdown proves that we don't really need most of the government anyhow. Like 800,000 people will just keep working for no pay indefinitely, and things will never break down. The government is a mighty big ship, but you can't coast on momentum forever, at some point you're going to need fuel for the engines.

Also it makes me angry when I see right-wing news stories about how the shutdown proves that we don't really need most of the government anyhow.

Well, they start from the conclusion and then find the evidence to support it.

Full disclosure: I'm one very fortunate Fed. I work for an agency that isn't funded by Congressional appropriations, so shutdowns are a non-event for me. I go to work as normal, and I receive my paycheck as normal. And I very much appreciate that situation.

That said, I'm extremely heartened by the responses to the shutdown. Restaurants offering free meals to unpaid Feds and the like. One of the school districts around here held a job fair to hire furloughed Feds as substitute teachers -- which isn't going to entirely make up for lost pay, but at least it's some needed money coming in for some people.

After a career of hearing federal employees bashed for everything that goes wrong in this world, it's nice to feel appreciated. (And no, I'm not taking advantage of any of the offers -- the people losing income need it far more than I do.)

Well, they start from the conclusion and then find the evidence to support it.

Or, you know, just skip step 2.

Also it makes me angry when I see right-wing news stories about how the shutdown proves that we don't really need most of the government anyhow

That is infuriating!

I wish it was a few years in the future and we were watching a historical movie recreation like All The President's Men.

Yeah, I'm so curious how all this will look when it's history. SOmeday this will all get summed up in a paragraph in a textbook as if it were inevitable and makes sense! So weird.

Also it makes me angry when I see right-wing news stories about how the shutdown proves that we don't really need most of the government anyhow

Thanks.

I don't talk much about the specifics of my job here, but for instance: my coworker G administers dredging projects, which ensures that the boats used for search and rescue in many small communities along the shoreline can continue to come into dock at their stations. These projects are very expensive, involve a ridiculous amount of coordination with local harbor districts, the Army Corps, Fish and Wildlife, National Marine Fisheries, local municipalities, and the boat operators themselves. The work is also time-limited because many harbors have endangered fish, and you are not allowed to do in-water work during endangered salmon runs or whatever. So maybe you can only dredge for 8 weeks out of the year, from July 1 to August 31.

Being out of work for a solid month is royally screwing up G's ability to get the contracts and projects in place to get the dredging done, and will then interfere with unit operations, since we don't spend the money on dredging until we really need to do it. And the units provide port security, navigational aids, search and rescue, smuggling interdiction, environmental response -- all that stuff necessary to protect the country's coastlines and its uses.

Everyone in this country benefits if G gets her work done: commercial and recreational mariners, environmental groups, shipping firms, major ports, everyone directly or indirectly involved in global shipping. And it's tricky, detail-oriented work -- you can't hand it off to some junior lieutenant and expect them to succeed at it. But instead we're scolded by the GOP for being parasites on the public.

You can't do this kind of work in a libertarian way: nobody has the money to support that! It is a public good, and the public needs to pay for it.

t end rant